On Monday 25 May 2026, Boris Delange (MD, Medical Informatics & Intensive Care, University Hospital of Rennes), presented the INDICATE Minimal Data Dictionary to the European medical informatics community during MIE 2026 (Medical Informatics Europe), held in Genova, Italy (25-28 May 2026).
On behalf of the INDICATE consortium, Boris presented the INDICATE Minimal Data Dictionary. This is a carefully selected and peer-reviewed list of ICU concepts that is compatible with OMOP and FHIR. It helps clinicians and data scientists use the same language and makes the process of mapping concepts faster and easier. This is an important step for federated ICU research, where data can be used across different locations without being moved.
Boris started with a simple observation: clinicians and data scientists don’t speak the same language. A clinician asks for “total bilirubin”, while a data engineer needs the exact technical definition and the specific codes (LOINC, SNOMED CT, etc.). The INDICATE Data Dictionary provides both, side by side. Concept mapping is hard: a single variable can map to hundreds of candidate codes, so every data provider redoes the same work and often chooses differently – small inconsistencies that can silently bias federated analyses!
Boris presented the dictionary which contains 332 peer-reviewed, ETL-ready concept sets across 9 clinical categories, each linked to both OMOP and HL7 FHIR, using SNOMED CT, LOINC, RxNorm and UCUM. Every concept set is versioned, reviewed, and enriched with expert comments – and its quality comes from the diversity of reviewers: a pharmacist, a biologist, an intensivist each catch different issues.
The web application of INDICATE was also shared, this runs entirely in the browser with no install and no login: anyone can browse, search, read the expert comments, and suggest changes in a couple of clicks. It supports both OMOP and FHIR from the start, which is still rare.
The dictionary is also one of the building blocks of INDICATE’s federated infrastructure, which spans 15 data providers across 12 European countries and 6 clinical use cases.
The MIE is an event attended by researchers, clinicians, data scientists, informaticians and interoperability experts working on health data standardization and federated analytics across Europe – and anyone interested in OMOP/FHIR-based ICU data harmonization.
The INDICATE team from Seville was present as well – notably Carlos Luis Parra-Calderón. The work is a joint effort of the INDICATE Clinical Demonstrations and Common Data Models work packages.
